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Shout Outs & Shit

I don't typically do this, but I think it's long overdue.

Shouting out love and good vibes toward Atlanta, where Cayce recently had to deal with a serious beesting incident.  Hoping you're feeling solid, now, and that Matt's heart rate has returned to normal.  Hugs.

To Josh, for his kickin' bonsais and Amy J for her lovely photos on Flickr.

EEH, with the new baby and the weird medical shit - much love and support and keep us updated as you travel and as you find out more.  Glad you and yours didn't wash away in the recent storms and flooding and general H2O excesses.  Also, Hugs.

My Mom, who's just left a town she didn't like and is looking for a job and a future.  Hopefully, that'll be me in a short while (showed the house today), so I feel this, and you should, too.

ESP & DLF: my official public and excited congratulations on your impending nuptials!  You are going to let Eileen be the ring bearer, yeah?

Kat & her crew - hope Dale's much better and looking forward to seeing you guys soon - real soon.

Brian & Kate: for the super cool Dad's day card.

To Trogg's Bad Dream - small but exuberant good wishes that you can take with you on your newest quest/adventure/journey to the CR.  We'll miss you, but I bet we'll all be glad things worked out this way in a year.  Y'know, Cubans are legal where you will be.  I'm just sayin'.

To Jones, also on his way to the CR to enjoy cheap living, soft company, and fresh fruit.  All the best, Jim, and remember: you unofficially adopted me in an informal ceremony last year.  (Insert previous comment about the the legality of Cuban smokables.)

Ev - were you convinced by the PowerPoint or what, man?  Call.

To BLSH!  You never blog anymore.  What's with that?

Anyone in the Madtown crew I didn't already specifically mention - miss you apart and together, whether I always say so or not.

To the SD-50's that pumped this.  Peace.

(Homestar's up there 'cause he always makes me feel happy.)

Andrea Yates

Andrea Yates is back on trial again.

I have extreme feelings about this case, so this seems like the place for them.  Andrea drowned her five Biblically-named children in her bathtub back in 2001, and was tried and convicted of it by a Texas jury who rejected her insanity plea and found her guilty.  In 2005, the verdict was overturned because one of the expert witnesses in her case apparently can't afford a subscription to TV Guide.  Now that Andrea's back on trial, two things are happening that prompted this blog entry: There are vigils for her being held in Houston, and she has become a sort of poster child for the evils of post-partum depression.  These things burn my ass, and I'll tell you why.  After all, it's why you're here.

Vigils?  For a convicted (overturned, granted) murderer?  I know these are religious crazy people from Texas, (redundant, redundant, redundant) but at some point, unless you're after the TV time, you gotta let things go.  And what's the vigil for?  Is that going to make her better?  Make her less responsible for snuffing out the lives of her five children, drowning one while the body of another floated next to him?  Why are you wasting your fucking time?  Ow, my head.

As far as the post-partum thing goes, I am not here to minimize the effects of post-partum depression on the mind and body.  However, saying that Yates killed her kids because of post-partum depression is like saying Jeff Dahmer offed a bunch of guys because he was gay.  It's incomplete at best, inaccurate and insulting at worst.  Andrea Yates has a history of mental disorders exacerbated by an overlord husband and a fire-and-brimstone religion.  Is she crazy?  Yes, but according to the legal standard applied, she knew that what she had done was against the law, because she called the cops after.  It's clear to me that she should go away forever, and nothing you do to her will torture as badly as A) What her brain is doing to her right now, or B) the realization of what she's done should her mind ever heal.  It's equally clear to me that she was isolated and victimized within her marriage, and by her church.  The weird religious stuff alone would be enough to eat her brain, much less living in a fucking bus for awhile.

But I keep coming back to the five innocent lives she took, in an orderly fashion, one Summer morning.  I cannot understand how anyone, anywhere, could say that she is the face of post-partum depression.  It's as bad as the Twinkie defense.  She had a full-blown psychosis that was under control 'til she stopped her meds, and post-partum influences plus bad religion made a cocktail of death for five children.  So, stop with the vigils, the tirades (that's right, I'm calling for an end to tirades!) about post-partum issues and the feeling sorry for poor Andrea.  Let's mourn her kids, pillory her husband, and abolish fire & brimstone.  Then you'll have accomplished something.

Very Small Dreams

It's 4:13 in the morning, and I just watched Abby having a dream. 

Her eyes began to move around, though lazily, like they do in life, not so much like they were focusing, just taking stuff in.  She made feeding faces a couple of times, her breathing sped up and slowed down, and she pushed with her arms and legs against this wrap-type thing she's sleeping in.  It was great.  It was nice to have some non-contentious, non-problem solving snuggle time with my baby.  Over the past weeks, it seems like all my time with her has been of the "baby's crying, start trying things" variety, and I end up handing her off to Mommy, which always feels lame, since I don't see her all that much anyway, by comparison.  We've played on her mat a little, but these times have seemed like blips next to the other.  I know, I'm just tired and a little strung out - which is why watching her dream soothes me.

Type in "do babies dream" on Google, and you will get a series of results which boil down to "yeah, probably."  Not in the conventional (whatever the fuck that means when discussing dreams) sense, but yes, in the 'informational burst' sense, sure, they do something like dreaming.  Of what?  Well, one could assume wombs and nipples and eating, right?  A nightmare for an infant would be a full diaper, yeah?  Anyway, she's asleep again now, after a bottle, so I probably should be, too.  That is the rule, after all.

Now she's talking in her sleep.

Warehouse Jihad

The biggest problem with a government that lies to us and keeps such a tight-fisted grip on information that only a little bit ekes out from the cracks in the hands of stone that hold it is that when they tell me something like this, I don't know whether or not to believe anything I hear.  So I start out ignoring the story entirely, focusing instead on Paris Hilton's new song (catchy & ungood pop product - like those Russian lesbians - remember them - they were huge for a couple of minutes), or Ghana kicking us out of the World Cup.  Then the media, acting as the big, fat mouth of the federales, releases a little bit more developed version of the events, alleged or otherwise, and I can then begin to pay attention and see what percentage of a thing I'm ultimately going to roll with, and what percentage is going to end up in the "Oswald File" in the back left center of my forebrain.

Now, they've told us that these incredibly dangerous homegrown terrorists lived in a warehouse (that they called "The Embassy") in Liberty City, FL, that they all had cultish nicknames, and that at least one guy may have been completely insane, walking around the 'hood in his bathrobe with a crooked stick.  They were supposedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, but no arrests were made there in the Windy City, 'cause all these guys are just outside of Miami, which is 1410 miles away from the Sears Tower.  They had no money, no boots, no funding, no support, no explosives and no guns, but they had photos of the tower - uh-huh - and they'd been talking to a guy they thought was going to help them organize this thing who actually turned out to be G-Man undercover.  They were doing martial arts and an aromatic, full-flavored, esoteric religious blend of Islam, Christianity and Judaism - so I guess they weren't Islamists, yeah?  They did "pledge allegiance to Al-Qaeda," say the articles about this.  Okay.

I got news for you: I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America every day for years without feeling any way about it, and you can't blow up a major office building with the martial arts unless we're in The Matrix.  Which we could be, I guess.  The important thing is that we keep our "guys & gals" (sorry, I heard Peter Pace say it yesterday) in places like Iraq and Afghanistan in the War on Terror.  That'll guard us against threats coming out of South Florida.  I know I feel safer.

I'm recruiting people, by the way, to follow me in a patchwork faith involving the teachings of Stan Lee, Voltaire, and Sun Tzu.  We're going to meet late at night and measure our feet, eat Chinese food, and plan to blow up Paris Hilton.  I've already got surveillance (by which I mean naked) photos of her.  Please arrive with a nickname picked out already (submit via the comments fields), and there will be punch and pie.

New Holidays

(2:47 am)

I think we need a new holiday or two.  On Thanksgiving, you sit around, ostensibly, and say - whether publicly or to yourself - what you're "thankful" for.  If you're less spiritually inclined, it's just the stuff you're grateful for, and if you're even less introspective than that, it's an excuse to drink and see your friends.  What I think we need is a sort of reverse of this holiday - Kvetchgiving, or something to that effect.  Bitching Day.  You'll think of a name.

See, I have this theory that a good chunk of the bitterness and nastiness that I run into on a day-to-day basis is just unresolved tension leaking out.  That is to say, these fuckers have some major baggage stuck in the claim area, and all you really see during the daylight hours is the red bag on the carousel no one's claimed yet.  Back behind the wall, though?  Whole sets of matched emotional Samsonite, embossed with flowered patterns that evoke Grandma's couches and stuffed to the gills with the shit they can't say out loud if they want to keep their jobs, friends, places of residence, freedom, families, whatever.  That's what this Catharsis Day would be for.  From the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep (or lose your damn voice) you would be encouraged to bitch, piss, moan, whine, gripe, carp, fuss and fume about everything that's bothering you, from shit that happened when you were in the womb to the present.  From the top of your lungs shouting to the  constant "crazed displaced person on the streets of a major metropolitan area" muttering, all forms of getting IT off your chest would be acceptable.  You know people would feel better.  Just air that shit out there, Charlie.  Like a primal scream for a whole country, all at once.

Of course, I guess many blogs are like that every day.  That means you can view a visit to this venerable blog as a holiday.  I like that.  A little cathartic holiday.  For me more so than you, probably, but that's kind of your lookout, isn't it?

Additionally, I realized that I, like most people, mark the anniversaries of many pleasant things that have happened in my life.  I observe the births of those I love, my wedding anniversary (and the other one that goes with it...and the other one...) and other positive significa.  I also think, for my own sake, I need to start marking the anniversaries of major fucking disasters, too.  The third anniversary of moving to Pensacola, for example.  August something or other.  The time I decided this, ignored that person's advice, jumped out of that, punched so-and-so (I never liked that prick anyway), drank this - whatever.  It's not about dwelling about the shit on the shoes of my past, either - it's more of a minor victory kind of thing: "Hey, I've survived three years past that particular stupidity.  I feel better about myself right now."  Maybe this wouldn't have the same emotional effect for everyone.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't try it though.  Mark your calendar up with that shit, and watch people's reactions.

These are changes we need, people.  It's a good train.  Get on it.

Red Hot/White Hot Heat

Congratulations to the 2006 Miami Heat, this year's NBA Champions!  I watched the last 26 seconds of play with one child building up to a good cry in my arms, and another buried in pillows on the couch, not understanding why I was standing up in the middle of our living room.  They were great games.  They were close, well-played, nerve-wracking games that I'm sure C is glad are over, because they've been eating my brains for the last couple of weeks.  I don't watch a lot of sports on TV for a couple of reasons: I don't pay close enough attention to know when they come on, because I don't really like television, and I just can't invest that kind of time in watching other people play ball.  I use the Super Bowl as an excuse to make chili, and I do love the NBA finals - though I wish I had someone to watch them with who liked watching.  Regardless, I have to thank both the Heat and the Mavs for some really exciting basketball.

I was glad the Heat won.  Wade is really a good, sharp player, and his lack of ego throws into sharp relief what a punk Kobe was back in the day.  I've always loved Alonzo Mourning, and his denials in this game were spectacular to behold.  I have a soft spot for Pat Riley, too - I think because he comes off as 100 pounds of TNT in a 50 pound can.  He's so tight and restrained.  Like a corset.  Shaq, since leaving the Lakers, has become someone I want to watch.  He's goofy and huge and plays really weird ball - but the Heat have this collective lack of ego thing going, and watching him get behind his team - Haslem, Walker, Posey, Williams -  and just play was fun to see.  Anyway - to those of you who don't observe the B-ball on the old telly, you missed out this time.  Despite the odd controversy, these were tight, masterfully played games  and they made me remember how much I enjoy watching the NBA finals.

Go Heat!

What? I Mean, What?!?

Maybe this is just me being insensitive again, but I'm thinking that the people of New Orleans had their ability to handle things maybe washed away by flooding.  It could be the news coverage (and yes, it probably is) but they're coming off like a cityful of whiny bitches lately. 

Over the weekend, they had six deaths in the course of two crimes.  People in New York, LA, London, Chicago, Mexico City, Atlanta, Rio, etc. are snickering at you right now.  In one crime, a SUVful of teens was shot to death 'over revenge or drugs.' First, fire that cop who said that right now and send me his paycheck.  I could have belched that bit of wisdom.  Revenge or drugs.  Wow.  You think so, flatfoot?  You been watching a lot of Ironside re-runs or what?  Are you the "serial crusher" guy?  The second crime in what is being called a "wave" involves a guy who was stabbed over beer.  This is not a wave.  This is people in a hot summer wreckage that used to be a city getting pissed and offing one another.  This is two events.  Go to a sporting event and do the wave with two people.  At best, you will look silly; and so does New Orleans.

The population of the Big Easy is still down by half.  The police force, depleted by recent events is down to a little less than 1400 officers from their pre-Katrina numbers of about 1750.  So they're 350 guys short to deal with half as many people.  So naturally, in the midst of this major goddamn disturbance, Blanco and Nagin have decided that the National Guard is a good idea.  What?  Police aren't doing it for you?  Local government is completely out of control here?  You fuckers really need the National Fucking Guard to restore order?  Why don't you just call Batman?

Makes me want to drive the three hours into the delta and start in on Bockwursting people, just to do it.  Who's with me?  Additionally, how many of you, based on this criteria, have ever been personally responsible for a crime wave?

Stay On Target

Apparently, if you are among the people (as I was) watching the couple of Will & Grace re-runs that come on after midnight on the Pensacola ABC affiliate, you are among the lost.  In rapid succession, my wife and I were subjected to ads for aboveground pools, The Book of Mormon, debt consolidation services, and Quest dating services.  The aboveground pools ad conformed to the Hedbergian Observation, and did not depict anyone having fun for more than 30 seconds.  The Book of Mormon ad blindsided me a little, because I thought it would be a standard Christian thing, and I remember their old ads.  They've come a long way from the singing "lie" people and the PSA-style long-form commercials, and now have attractive female talking heads.  (This being Pensacola, I should have known better.  The Christians have huge market share and are on TV in better timeslots.)  The debt consolidation people have a life preserver being thrown as their logo, and Quest spends more time on tits and crotches than does Will & Grace.  Presumably, if you are lonely, broke, unsaved, and could go for a swim, you are being targeted.

Shit.

As my lovely wife has just pointed out - we are lonely, broke, unsaved, and she at least, could go for a swim.  So kudos to the advertising schedulers at WEAR TV3; you found us.  Now fuck off and die.

Inappropriate Observations

A shoe bomber has killed 11 people and wounded 20 others in a mosque in Iraq, and this is where most news agencies are inserting the phrase "despite last week's killing of Zarqawi (sung to rhyme with Volare)" or "despite ongoing coalition security operations in Iraq."  So I guess they thought last week's highly questionable bombing followed by the mob movie style "17 raids we've been waiting to hit people with until after we got this one guy like it's Donnie Brasco or something" was going to be a silver bullet, thus ending a war.  And it might've been, if it were part of a plan, but it's not.  And we're having the devil of a time with that back at home, as Dems struggle to re-structure the argument from "stay the course vs. pull out entirely" into something workable like "put in enough support and cash to repair the hideous mess since to pull out now would likely kill thousands and destabilize a region, but staying the course simply isn't an option when there is no course vs. back out now because we've realized that the President is a monomaniac and a fool who never planned anything, and there will certainly be more deaths as a result."  Guys - good luck with that, okay?

I think the guy did it just to bring street cred back to the profession of shoe bomber.  I mean, Richard "I appear homeless and confused" Reid did for shoe bombers what Rodney King did for motorists, so I'm thinking this guy just wanted shoe bombers to be taken seriously again.  Worked, didn't it?

Over on Warren Ellis' blog, I saw this story about a man who killed a woman with a sausage.  No, this was not some kind of sex thing, this was some kind of enormous German sausage thing.  A Bockwurst, as it turns out.  The article manages to dissuade me from my original interpretation of events, which was that he beat her to death with a sausage, (a la the Joker from Mask of the Phantasm) explaining instead that she choked on the item in question, which is far more normal, but does kind of go back to the sex thing.  The article also makes the creepiest use of the word "administered" that I have ever seen, as in "the man acknowledged that he may have administered the Bockwurst to the woman."  Whoa.  I don't think this goes far enough, however.  I think this calls for a whole new verb.  If you kill someone with a Bockwurst, then it is my considered opinion that you can be said to have 'Bockwursted' that individual.  Disagree?  Then you may be first in line for a good Bockwursting.

I can finally say something positive about Monkeyface.  Yesterday, he declared something like 140,000 square miles of space around Hawaii a national monument.  This means that a lot of shallow water reef systems are now protected, and even fishing will be phased out over the course of the next few years.  Apparently, a lot of the credit for this belongs to Monkeyface getting a good lecturing (stopping short of an actual Bockwursting) from Cousteau Junior and "famous to those of us who read National Geographic" marine biologist Sylvia Earle.  I, of course, think he did it so I would have to say something nice about him, so he could take a little break from the stream of invective and vitriol that issues from the Squidbag on a nigh-regular basis.  And also to distract from the arguing going on about his fucking debacle in Iraq.  His "FucRaqle."  Yeah, I'm sure that was a factor, too.  So yes - Thank you, President Monkeyface for killing thousands and squandering billions of dollars so that you would need the press hit of protecting some coral reefs and endangered species.

Democratic Representative William Jefferson from the great state of Louisiana has declared that the entire House has risen up against him in a racist ploy to have him removed from the uber-powerful House Ways and Means committee before he is even accused of anything by anybody.  That's right, Billy.  It's because you're black, and has nothing to do with the 90 grand they found in your fridge during the possibly illegal search.  (It is hard to keep up with what is illegal and what is not with the current Supreme Court roster, I find.)  The fact that Rep. Jefferson is even willing to play this ugly-ass, overused race card is indicative of the state of politics in Louisiana.

Finally, I hate our pediatrician, I think.  Not my pediatrician, surely.  Dr. Thomas J. F******** was a kind and decent man who was patient with me and eventually taught me how to re-set certain bones and do my own sutures.  No, I mean this other person I have to deal with now.  I'm not even entirely convinced she exists, for one - but my wife claims to have seen her.  She never says anything good about her, though.  I went for the first couple of visits - 'cause I wasn't back at work yet - and I never saw her, only a phalanx of Nurse Practitioners.  And her scales don't match.  I'm warming up to hating her, is actually what's happening.  I'll let you know how that's coming.

At least it's fucking Friday.

I'm A Cunning Linguist

Your Linguistic Profile:

30% Dixie

30% General American English

30% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

This was fun, (thanks honey) but no real surprise.  I am a mimic by nature, I make up my own slang as needed, restructure sentences as they leave my mouth and end up having more conversations about the way I talk than I would prefer.  Everywhere I go, people assume I am from there - except in the Southeastern US, from whence I actually hail.  I catch hell on a regular basis for word choice and speed of delivery (too fast), but never pronounciation.  Travel, impressions, chorus, debate team, mocking those in authority, and just paying attention to the way other people talk; this is my reward.